


After the Awakening

by weareallstardust



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon Continuation, F/M, Flashbacks, Force Bond (Star Wars), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:56:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5959579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weareallstardust/pseuds/weareallstardust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A continuation of the story from the point we got to in Episode VII. Gives one of the ways I can see it continuing in Episode VIII. Contains a Force-bonded Kylo and Rey, eventual Stormpilot, a sort-of friendship between Kylo and Hux, Luke being rubbish as a Jedi master for Rey, my version of Rey's origin story and many of Hux's memories. Some of the nice guys are not nice... and have complex motivations, because... did anyone else think Luke looked very guilty in that last shot?</p>
<p>Will eventually have about 20 chapters, will be posting about 1-2 chapters a week as time allows. Rating may rise eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Light in the Dark

The first time Rey feels their connection it is wholly unexpected, sudden, like a blow to the head. She has been training hard for hours, Master Luke teaching her the steps of Shii-Cho, guiding her towards the true form, correcting her foot positioning or her grip on the sabre hilt. She feels the sun hot on the back of her neck, the strain in her calves from hours of practice. It is a hot day on Ahch-To, although nothing compared to what she is used to from Jakku. Then it crashes over her, not so much a voice as a presence, right inside her head.

_I’m sorry – forgive me._

She whirls round, stumbles slightly. Master Luke looks at her in surprise. “What is it?” he asks. She shakes her head, to clear it. No-one is there. It was not his voice. She knows, really, that she didn’t hear it in the normal way. It comes again.

_Give me one last chance, please._ Then a flash of pain – white-hot, worse than that time on Jakku when she got stung by a Fire Scorpion and thought that she would die for hours. She falls to her knees and drops the sabre.

“Maybe we have been practising long enough for today, Rey” says Luke, helping her up, with a worried crinkle forming between his eyes. She smiles at him, willing calm and contentment back onto her face to stop his concern. Later she wonders why she doesn’t just tell him what she heard, felt… connected with.

For now they go and sit by the cliff-edge, cross-legged, and sink into meditation. She tries to quiet herself inside, reach for the Force, feel it surround her and connect with her own life Force in the way Luke has taught her. It does not come as easily as normal but eventually she feels herself slipping away into a deep meditation. She feels the breeze in her hair, the smell of the ocean, sensing all the life teeming on this planet, beginning to reach out and feel life forms on other planets nearby. Maybe if she were powerful enough one day she could sense all beings everywhere in the galaxy, all the threads of the Force streaming out to bind together life itself.

After maybe half an hour she feels a gentle pull coaxing her out of her meditation and back into reality. For a moment she wishes she could stay as the ache of her muscles and of a stiff back from sitting in one place too long reassert themselves. Master Luke guides her back to their cliff-top perch and she opens her eyes to see him smiling at her. “You get stronger with the Force every day, Rey”, he says, “but be mindful of how far away from yourself you go when meditating. Until we are ready to be at one with the Force, there is danger in forgetting the needs of our body as well as our soul.”

She blushes, reacting to the praise and the gentle censure. “Yes, Master. Thank you.” When she first arrived on Ahch-To, Luke had told her how he had sometimes gone deep, deep, too deep into a meditative trance during the years he had spent in isolation. That it gets harder and harder to come back, that one time he almost could not find himself again and when he got back to himself, he had sat through a rainstorm and was soaked to the skin and shivering, nearly hypothermic.

Whilst Luke cooks them a simple dinner of fish and potatoes, she makes her way down to the sea, to cool off from her exertions. Despite living on a desert planet and not seeing water of this magnitude her whole life, she has discovered she can swim confidently, strongly. A natural skill it would seem, although something pulls at her like a long-forgotten memory of swimming, splashing around in a lake. She dives under, going right down to touch the sand at the bottom, washing away the sweat from hours of practice.

This time when the voice sounds inside her head it nearly makes her swallow a pint of seawater, since she is submerged and all other sounds are muffled, but this voice is very clear, as if it were someone speaking right in her ear.

_I cannot fail again, I must beat this. Kill the light, or kill the dark... next time, He will kill me. There must not be a next time._

This time it is even clearer the voice is someone in pain, great pain. Someone terrified. But also someone dangerous.

This time she recognises the voice straight away. It is Kylo Ren.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kylo has never been sure if the Supreme Leader can hear all his thoughts, or just the surface layers, those passing across his mind at that particular time. Before he comes into Leader Snoke’s presence he always makes sure to put up his defences as best he can, build layer upon layer of walls in his mind. Hide anything away that would provoke Leader Snoke to anger, behind cliffs of glass inside his head. Nevertheless, he often wonders if the Supreme Leader could tear down these walls if he wished and whether that would break his sanity once and for all.

_If I have any sanity left, that is_ , he thinks with a wry smile that no-one can see behind his mask.

That had been a bad session, the pain worse than normal. Punishment for Starkiller base; the Supreme Leader had been quick to anger since the destruction of the weapon, although he knew, as Kylo did, that this technological marvel would not win them the war. Destroying the Jedi, once and for all, was the most important step to ensure their victory. Whatever Hux thinks, scowls Kylo.

Speak of the devil… as he rounds the corner he notices Hux standing outside the door to his rooms. Even before Kylo appears he is standing stiffly, with perfect military bearing, tapping at a holopad. Somehow it annoys Kylo more than it ought to, that Hux cannot slouch or lean against the wall when no-one else is about, like an ordinary person.

“What do you want, Hux?” he snaps out, not prepared to tolerate any sniping or teasing in his current mood.

“Have you come from Leader Snoke?” Hux asks. He looks worried, chewing the corner of his lip, absentmindedly. It is unlike Hux to be worried. Kylo sighs… another conversation, before he gets a shower and a sleep, then.

“Alright, come in,” he grinds out, and uses the Force to slide the door open in a completely unnecessary display of power, just to wind Hux up. He walks through, unclipping his helmet as he goes, allowing the general to follow him in. He drops the helmet on the table by the door, turns around, scowls threateningly at Hux. Whatever else they might be, they are not friends. It is best the general knows this does not constitute an open invitation to drop by any time.

When he turns around, Hux gasps. “What did He do? Did you make Him angry?” Realising he must look worse than he expected, Kylo turns to the mirror over the sink. Aside from the scar across his face, faded now to a light pink after three weeks’ treatment with bacta patches, blood covers his face. It has come from a gash in his hairline (where He threw me against a column, he remembers), from a nosebleed and from where he has bitten almost through his lip during a particularly painful bout of Force lightning.

“We made Him angry. Losing the Starkiller base was not part of the plan at this stage. He is angry with me because now the Resistance can contact Skywalker, He is angry with you because you didn’t stop the attack on the base.”

Hux rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hands in a gesture of weariness. “I know. This is the angriest I’ve ever seen Him.”

Kylo leans against the corner of his washstand, unwilling to display weakness in front of the general by sitting down, but needing to take the weight off his injured leg. It’s not broken, he thinks, but he needs to check it out. Despite the subtle shift in his posture, Hux picks up on his discomfort and moves towards him. “Let me help patch you up.”

“No,” Kylo snaps quickly. “I’ll call a med-droid after you’ve gone. What do you want, anyway, Hux? I know you wouldn’t come all the way down here just to fuss over my injuries like a mother hen.”

Hux flushes angrily at this, turning almost the same shade of red as his hair. “Alright, no need to grouch at me when I’m trying to help you.”

“Well, spit it out then. What do you want?” Kylo asks, impatient now to get to looking after his injuries and to sleep. Hux swallows. Kylo watches him, curiously. What could be so difficult to say?

“I need your help, Ren,” he almost whispers, after a pause. Kylo stops, surprised. Whatever he had expected to hear, it was not the normally aloof and unflappable general asking for his help. Kylo knows that Hux thinks him an annoyance, disorderly and uncontrolled, a distraction from the true purpose of the First Order as he sees it. Kylo raises an eyebrow, meaning _elaborate further_.

“I need to protect myself, next time I am summoned by Leader Snoke”, Hux says, hesitantly. “I know you have ways of avoiding Him from seeing into your thoughts, from knowing your intentions completely. I need you to show me how to shield myself, when He looks in my head.”

“Why, what’s in your head that the Supreme Leader can’t see?” asks Kylo, amused.

Hux looks offended by his smirk. “Fine, then. Don’t help me. I thought for once you could be useful, rather than stalking around my ship destroying things.” He starts for the door, but Kylo grabs his arm.

“Alright,” he says, almost without thinking. “I’ll teach you, although I should warn you that you can’t shield your mind completely from someone as powerful with the Force as Leader Snoke. However, I can show you certain methods to protect information you don’t want seen. Ways to hide things, unless they are being specifically looked for, to hide things from a casual search.”

Hux’s shoulders sag, as if he has suddenly released some internal tension. “I can’t teach you right now, though”, Kylo clarifies. “I need to rest and get cleaned up. Come back tomorrow morning straight after breakfast, before your first shift.”

“Thank you, Ren”, Hux says, without looking at him. “I’ll call you a med-droid on my way out.” He leaves, the door swishing shut behind him.

What did I just agree to? thinks Kylo, finally sitting down to rest his leg. He is left wondering what that was all about, and where that leave him and Hux now. Not friends. Allies, maybe? As the med-droid arrives and solicitously chirrups away as it scans his injuries, he thinks that the real question is, what the normally so careful general is that afraid of revealing? Maybe I’ll have to have a look, tomorrow, he muses. But for now, sleep.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That evening Rey is subdued, at dinner. She is thinking over what happened earlier, wondering why she could possibly be hearing voices in her head, and especially that **particular** voice. She does wonder whether maybe she ought to tell Master Luke, seek his guidance. But then she imagines how it would worry him, how he would get that little crease of tension between his eyes again. _As if he hasn’t got enough to worry about, without the fate of the Jedi order and possibly the whole galaxy on his shoulders. Pull yourself together, Rey,_ she mentally scolds herself.

Still, it can’t be good. Hearing voices is never a good sign, even for a Jedi. It’s not like I was thinking of him, looking for his mind, I was focusing on the steps in the drills, she thinks. Maybe it’s the isolation on this island, only Luke for company, and he sometimes deep in meditation. How did he do it for so long without going mad? Although, she remembers, he had the Force ghosts to keep him company of course. He has told her how he can see, speak with, his old master Obi-Wan Kenobi, with his master Qui-Gon and with the great Master Yoda. Rey hasn’t met them, yet; Master Luke says she will not have that ability until she has communed further with the Force. It’s early days still, for her in her training.

It’s at this point in Rey’s thought process that she hears Luke clearing his throat pointedly. “Am I interrupting something, Rey?” he teases, in a mock stern tone. She can tell he isn’t really annoyed though. “It’s not that I mind if you find your own thoughts more scintillating company than me – my conversational skills might be a bit rusty, what with living by myself for fifteen years – but you normally seem so interested in my stories about the old Jedi.”

She dimly remembers that he was telling her about the time that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker were tracking an assassin through the busy skies of Coruscant. How Anakin had teased Obi-Wan by leaping off their speeder to bring down the shape-shifting assassin’s craft and corner her in a bar. It had been an interesting story.

“I’m sorry, Master,” she says, with an apologetic grin. “I was just considering the practice we were doing earlier and how I couldn’t get that last step. I think I’m putting my weight on my back foot too much, adopting a defensive posture as I would if I were fighting with my staff.”

Luke beams at her, and she immediately feels incredibly guilty for lying. Isn’t that part of the path to the Dark Side, or something? Fear, hate, anger, lying… something like that, she can’t remember exactly what Master Luke had said.

“You’re a good student, Rey,” Luke says, smiling kindly at her. “But you must remember to take some time off from thinking about training to relax.” This, of course, makes her feel even guiltier. _Guilt, that’s probably part of the path to the Dark Side, too,_ she muses, glumly. Still, she smiles back at Luke and washes the dishes and lights a campfire outside for them to meditate by that evening, as penance.

She still doesn’t know why she doesn’t tell him, about Kylo Ren, and his stupid voice in her head. _Except it isn’t really stupid, is it, Rey?_ a little treacherous voice in her head says. And then, _great, now I’m having an argument with myself. I really am going completely mad!_

That night she doesn’t find it as easy as normal to be at one with the Force, as Luke has taught her. It takes her a while to find that still, quiet place inside her, to drift off into the threads of the Force. She has to use the visualisations Master Luke used the first time to help her get started, of a light inside her, a soft glowing light that penetrates all her cells and that connects her to the Force inside of her. Eventually that helps and she feels much better when she drifts back to herself two hours later. More centred, calmer.

She half expects to struggle to get to sleep that night, but in fact she is so tired from drills and from running up and down the steps on the island, that she falls almost instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep. The next three days and nights, she hears nothing, and it seems that her routine is back to normal. She can almost start to believe that the whole thing was a daydream, that she imagined it entirely.

But the night after that, as she falls to sleep, she is plunged into his dreams, and it becomes clear that their connection is frighteningly real.


	2. Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was more difficult to write than expected as I found it difficult to get Kylo and Hux to behave ;-) I'm not all that happy with the result, any feedback/constructive criticism is very welcome. I hope chapter 3 will be up more quickly, probably by 25/02.

The morning Kylo has arranged to teach Hux how to shield his mind, he makes sure to wake and have breakfast early, so that by the time the general arrives at his quarters, he is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, meditating. It amuses him to be one step ahead of the general.

 

“Enter”, he calls, at the beep from his datapad. Hux comes in, looking tired and a little pale, his red hair standing out even more than normal. He does not react beyond a slight raise of one eyebrow, when he sees Kylo on the floor.

 

“Do you do this every morning, Ren?”

 

“You should try it, general. It focuses the mind.”

 

“My find is already perfectly focussed, thank you,” he snaps back.

 

“Let’s see, shall we?” Kylo responds, and before Hux has time to counter he plunges straight into his thoughts.

 

The first thing he notices is how orderly the general’s mind is, everything filed away. No tangled, chaotic trains of thought here. _You really are a cliché, Hux,_ he thinks. Kylo looks at Hux’s memories from this morning, noting how he woke before his alarm and walked the corridors for half an hour before breakfast. Probing further he locates Hux’s memory of last night, when he asked for assistance.

 

“Ah, how sweet, general. I see you were nervous of asking for my help last night. That you resent needing assistance from anyone.”

 

He feels Hux ineffectually resisting the invasion of his memories. Kylo is using a tiny proportion of his power to look inside the man’s mind. He withdraws and uncoils from his lotus position on the floor, going over to stand by the window.

 

Hux is visibly upset, struggling to keep his composure. Kylo hears his rapid breathing. He’s surprised the general isn’t more able to shield himself already from a Force user, that he wasn’t taught some basic defences in First Order training, or directly by his father.

 

After a minute Hux seems to have recovered a little.

 

“Take off your mask, Ren”, he commands.

 

Kylo obeys, unclipping the mask and dropping it carelessly to the floor where he stands with a loud thud; but turning round he fixes Hux with an authoritative glare.

 

“Let’s get things straight, Hux. You’re not in charge here. If you want my help, firstly: I am in control in my own space; secondly: what’s in it for me?”

 

Hux blinks, looking surprised. “I hadn’t thought… I mean, what do you want from me in return?”

 

“Nothing, yet. You have nothing I want,” Kylo responds. “Let’s chalk it up as a favour you owe me, down the line.”

 

Hux chews his lip, thoughtfully. It’s a nervous habit of his, Kylo noticed it yesterday. “Alright, let’s resume.” Again, he doesn’t give the general time to rally his defences but re-enters his memories decisively, this time aiming to satisfy his curiosity and looking for whatever it is that Hux doesn’t want the Supreme Leader to see. It doesn’t take him long to find it, now he knows there’s something to be found.

 

The first memory is old, slightly faded, a memory from childhood. It feels like something that Hux has wanted to forget, has kept hidden away even from himself, rather than a treasured memory he has relived time and again.

 

He is in a parade ground of some sort, outdoors, surrounded by trees and with a light drizzle of rain falling. It is evening and the place is deserted apart from a group of boys, teenagers by the look of them, surrounding someone. Moving closer, he sees it is Hux, and that he is younger than the rest of them – maybe ten years old.

 

“Everyone knows you’re only here because your father ordered the program to take you. You didn’t earn your place here. It’s disgusting, anyone else who fails at the drills like you do would be dropped from the Cadets in a heartbeat,” one of the boys says, angrily.

 

The younger Hux looks a mixture of terrified and livid. “It’s not true”, he protests. “I took the exams, the same as anyone else. It’s only because I’m the youngest that I don’t do well in the physical tests. I always win in the tactical simulations.”

 

At this the others mutter angrily. The boy who spoke before punches Hux in the face and he stumbles, falls, blood pouring from his nose. Another boy steps forward and tugs at the sleeve of the apparent leader. “Leave it, Drake”, he says, nervously.

 

“No, I’m fed up of this pathetic waste of space. Daddy’s boy… let’s see your grasp of tactics get you out of this one.”

 

Kylo can hardly bear to watch as they start kicking and punching the young Hux, who has curled up into a ball on the ground. After a few seconds the older boys hear someone coming and scatter, running off into the night.

 

He can feel the older Hux in the here and now resisting his viewing of this memory, trying to push him out again. He brushes the resistance away with little effort and continues to watch the scene unfold.

 

A man of about fifty sits behind a large desk made of some dark wood, in a gloomy office. He has ginger hair, greying now and receding slightly around the temples. Due to his resemblance to Hux and by the commandant’s designation on his Imperial uniform, Kylo guesses that this is Hux’s father. Brendol Hux, the man in charge at the Arkanis Academy.

 

As the younger Hux enters his study, his father looks up from the holopad he is working on and sees his son, covered in blood and holding onto the doorframe to remain standing. Kylo expects him to rush over, comfort his son, tend to his injuries. Instead he snorts derogatively.

 

“You allowed yourself to be beaten up again. You really are pathetic.”

 

“Father –“

 

“No! How do you expect to be an officer, a general, if the other officers do not respect you? They do not fear you. Fear is power, and power is everything.”

 

The younger Hux is crying quietly, still leaning against the doorframe as if he would drop to the floor if he let go. He says, in almost a whimper, “I wish Mother were here.”

 

This seems to anger his father. “Your mother would not be proud of a son like you. A weak, snivelling failure who will never amount to anything. Go away, and only return when you have earned my respect.”

 

The memory is over and Kylo can feel another, beyond, deeper in Hux’s memory. He pulls himself into it, can feel Hux screaming at him to **get out of my head** , but ignores him and enters the next scene.

 

Hux is slightly older, maybe twelve or thirteen. He is walking down a gloomy corridor, alone. As in the last memory it is night-time and he hears the ever-present rain falling on the roof. Arkanis again, then. Suddenly a group of older teenagers emerge from a side corridor just ahead of him.

 

“Ah, we were just looking for you, weren’t we boys?” says the oldest one, gleefully. He can see it’s the same boy who tormented Hux in the last memory, taller and larger now.

 

“I’m not looking for trouble. Leave me alone, Drake,” Hux replies expressionlessly.

 

“Aren’t you ready for another beating, brat?”

 

“I don’t want to fight you.”

 

“There’s never much fighting involved, as far as I remember.” The next few seconds happen so quickly he struggles to follow the action. The ringleader, Drake, goes in to punch him. Hux dodges, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife. He doesn’t offer any warning but brings the knife straight up in a wide arc, slitting the boy’s throat from ear to ear. Blood shoots over him and Drake falls to the ground, clearly dead instantly.

 

The other boys scream and run for their lives down the corridor. “No-one else want to fight?” Hux calls after them sarcastically.

 

He sees Hux enter his father’s study, much later, covered in blood and grinning manically, standing tall. He sees the commandant look up from his holopad where he seems to have been watching a holovid of the incident in the corridor. He expects to see Hux get court-martialled for killing a fellow cadet, but his father smiles at him.

 

“Now they respect you. This is a lesson you must not forget, when you are in command.”

 

The younger Hux repeats the lesson. “Fear is power, and power is everything.” His father hugs him tightly, then, and tells him how proud his mother would be of the way he is growing up.

 

Kylo exits the scene, looking straight away for the next memory, trying very hard not to think about his own mother and father, their mutual disappointment.

 

Pushing onwards he finds himself in a more familiar environment: Snoke’s presence chamber on Starkiller base, where they go to address his giant hologram when summoned. The hologram is active in this memory, Snoke leaning forward on his throne and peering down at a kneeling Hux.

 

“General,” the Supreme Leader growls, and Kylo hears the familiar echo of the tall cavern. “Is the construction still on schedule?”

 

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” replies memory-Hux. “The weapon will be ready on time, as scheduled. It will be perfect.” Kylo can feel his pride in the weapon, his surety of purpose.

 

“I hope so, for your sake. This project will prove your worth to me, General. If you should fail…”

 

Hux is quick to respond. “I will not fail - I promise you.”

 

As the hologram fades, Hux remains standing there and Kylo feels him trying to centre himself. He repeats in his head like a mantra: power, order, control. Power, order, control – I will have these things. However, Kylo can also sense memory-Hux’s true emotions at this point: doubt, guilt, a ghastly sense of dread building in the pit of his stomach.

 

_You can’t deceive yourself,_ thinks the general as he strides out of the presence chamber. _How much longer can you deceive everyone else?_

 

He reaches for the final memory and senses that Hux truly wants him out of his mind now. He fights back more strongly as Kylo reaches in and finds himself in front of Snoke in person this time, Hux kneeling before the Supreme Leader’s throne. This is recent, he thinks. They are in Snoke’s temple on Korriban. The room is vast, dark, ringed with ancient columns and twisted crumbling statues of Sith lords from bygone times.

 

Kylo can taste the waves of fear and pain coming from Hux this time. He knows that the ancient darkness of the Sith planet affects non Force sensitives like the general, as well as Force users like himself. He knows the unnamed sense of dread will be making Hux nauseous, jumpy, eating away at his mind.

 

He smells the familiar scent of death emanating from the throne above him, and the metallic tang of blood coming from Hux. The general looks terrible, the effect of torture, sleepless nights and the malevolent presence of the planet itself taking their toll on him.

 

Kylo realises that this is after the destruction of Starkiller base, in the last few weeks. He can see that Hux is being punished for his failure, as he has been.

 

Snoke speaks quietly from his perch above the scene. “What use are you, General? You have promised so much but you fail to deliver. I thought I saw your father’s greatness in you, but you are weak. I have no use for weakness. Go… out of my sight, whilst I think about what I will do with you.”

 

Hux rises, bows deeply and stumbles out of the temple without his usual grace. Outside, he collapses to his knees and retches, coughing up dark blood.

 

Kylo can hear his next thought drop like a stone into a still pond. _I need to leave, I need to get out. I don’t want to do this any more._ The ripples spread throughout his mind, leaving behind a small hope beyond the despair that sits heavily in this place. _Maybe there is still somewhere I can go…but how can I be free of Him?_

 

Having seen what he wants to know, Kylo resurfaces from Hux’s mind and back into the room. Released, the general hits him, hard, snapping his head to the side. He is angry, spitting curses and breathing hard from the effort of resisting the probing at his thoughts.

 

“I didn’t agree to that. You have no right –“

 

“I have every right,” Kylo interrupts. “If you want my help, I needed to see what it was that needed concealing from the Supreme Leader.”

 

Hux stills, grasps at his shoulder, looks straight into his eyes. He looks wild with fear. “Will you tell Him? You know he will kill me.”

 

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t alert Snoke, give the general up. Normally he hates traitors, disloyalty. If he is honest with himself though, he can’t give Hux up for this crime. It would hypocritical, since those thoughts have also been in his mind in the last few weeks, since fighting the scavenger and killing his father – killing Han Solo, he corrects himself. Kylo looks down at Hux, shakes his head to say, no, I won’t tell anyone. Hux almost collapses with relief.

 

Kylo settles back into his meditation pose on the floor, beckons the general to join him. “If I’m not going to give you up, I may as well do as I promised, and teach you to shield these memories. If He detects you, I will be implicated too, now.” He frames it in these terms, and it’s true that their fate is bound together now by this agreement. There’s more to it than that though, he is so alone. Hux can be someone - not a friend but maybe an ally.

 

Hux sits, calmer, inclines his head in thanks and allows the tension to drop out of his shoulders somewhat. “Thank you, Ren,” he says, in a soft voice.

 

“Let’s begin, then,” Kylo says, and they get to work.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The first clue Rey has that it is not a normal dream is that she’s clearly on a planet she’s never been to before. How could she dream of somewhere she doesn’t know? The second is the sheer vividness of everything – it doesn’t **feel** like a dream. If anything, it has more of the quality of the vision she had the first time she touched Luke’s lightsabre, but less frantic, as if she has a little more control.

 

This place is stiflingly hot, hotter even than Jakku. The air stinks of sulphur and tastes like hot metal and she can barely breathe. She gasps in a few desperate breaths, choking on the ash floating on the hot wind and feels a visceral panic as her lungs struggle for oxygen. She thinks of what Master Luke has told her and bites back the panic, forces her breathing back under control.

 

It’s then that she sees him, sitting calmly and seemingly oblivious to her presence, at the edge of a cliff that overlooks a river of lava. Kylo Ren is cross-legged in the same meditation pose that Luke taught her, with his back to her. He is wearing the same black robes as before and has his mask off, his dark hair blowing gently in the warm air.

 

Although he doesn’t seem to be about to attack her, Rey immediately unclips her – Luke’s – lightsabre from her belt and falls into a defensive posture. She moves forward cautiously without igniting her weapon. _What would happen_ , she wonders, _if I killed him here? In whatever this vision is? Would he die in real life?_

 

“If you’re going to do it, get on with it,” he says suddenly, in a quiet voice.

 

She startles, despite herself. “You knew I was here?” He turns his head towards her and she sees for the first time since she fought him the scar she gave him then. It runs diagonally across his face and looks painful still, although faded by the time that has passed. _Good,_ she thinks. He smirks at her, and she finds herself biting back frustration again.

 

“You’re as loud and unsubtle as a Wookiee,” he returns, with a lopsided grin that both annoys her and stirs something else, in the pit of her stomach. She scowls at him.

 

“Where are we? Why have you brought me here?”

 

“You’re the one that invaded my dream and disturbed my very pleasant meditation. I didn’t bring you anywhere.”

 

“Answer the question,” Rey grinds out between clenched teeth. How he can annoy her this much in two minutes is beyond her.

 

“This planet is called Mostafa. It’s a place I come, sometimes, to think. You might say it’s where Vader was born. The question is, why you are here, in my dream, bothering me whilst I meditate?”

 

Rather than opening that can of worms, because really _Why is she here?_ Rey gestures to the planet incredulously.“You **choose** to come here, in your dreams? Of all the planets, this smelly, dangerous, baking hot dump? You really are psychotic.”

 

“Says the scavenger who lived in a junkyard for a decade,” he teases.

 

Ren stands up, suddenly, uncurling from his meditative pose, and turns to face her. She jumps back, igniting her lightsabre, on the defensive again at the sudden movement. He looks at her intently, arches one eyebrow and asks, “Are you going to fight me again, Rey?” He doesn’t draw his lightsabre, leaves it hanging at his belt. She’d forgotten how tall he is, how much larger than her. But she remembers Luke’s teaching, how you can use an opponent’s size against him.

 

“I could,” she replies coolly. “I’ve been training –“

 

“With **Master Luke** , I know,” he cuts in, venom in his tone as he speaks the Jedi’s name. “How is that going, by the way? Have you learned everything he can teach you yet, from his miserable hovel on some godforsaken rock? Are you ready for a proper teacher?”

 

She can feel his rage, untamed, a deep dark well of bitterness he can barely contain. He is breathing hard and she can tell he is struggling to retain control of his emotions.

 

“Why do you hate him so much?” she wonders aloud.

 

“Oh, he hasn’t told you yet, what happened all those years ago? He hasn’t trusted you enough to tell you your own story? Have you asked him who left you on Jakku, Rey, or why you can’t remember?” He strides decisively towards her, hand outstretched towards her face, as he did when he read her mind, back on Starkiller base. Although she is the one with a lit sabre and he still hasn’t drawn his weapon, she backs away and he stops, clenches his outstretched hand into a fist and drops it to his side. She feels stifled, a combination of the atmosphere on the planet and the darkness of his presence.

 

She is startled to see tears in his eyes as he says quietly, “Go back and ask him to tell you where you came from, why you were on Jakku. Then we’ll talk again.” At that he turns away and walks back to the edge of the cliff, resumes his cross-legged position and it seems his meditation.

 

She isn’t sure what to do and hesitates, standing behind him with her lightsabre drawn. She still wonders whether she ought to just strike him down, after all he is a murderer, but two things stop her. Firstly, it seems wrong to attack him from behind, when he obviously has no intent to fight her. (Although a small voice inside says, _and didn’t he attack Finn from behind?_ ) Secondly, some of what he’s said is true. She can’t deny that Master Luke has been resisting her questions and she remembers a couple of times when she caught him looking at her with something like guilt and sadness. It’s clear she needs to talk to Luke, and then… then she will have more questions for Kylo Ren.

 

As she dithers, standing there at his shoulder, he sighs, saying without anger, “Your thoughts are too loud. Go away.” Then he makes a gesture with his hand and she feels herself being flung away, rising out of the dream, then she is falling, falling, and awakes with a start in her own bed. During the night she has flung the blankets off and the room is cold as it always is on Ahch-To, but her skin is hot as if she has really spent an hour in the stifling air on Mostafa.

 

Rey goes to the open window of the hut and takes in deep lungfuls of the cool night air. It’s so refreshing after the stink of sulphur.

 

_What was that?_ she wonders. As she is standing at the window, lost in thought and half planning whether and how to bring this up with Master Luke, Kylo Ren’s voice sounds in her head again.

 

_Don’t forget, return to me once you have spoken with him. I’ll be waiting for you._

 

She shivers, the cold suddenly cutting through her thoughts and sending her back to huddle under the blankets. But she doesn’t find it easy to get back to sleep, tossing and turning until dawn eventually breaks over the ocean and turns the crags of the island to gold outside the window.

 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When Luke wakes it is early and he heads outside to sit in his customary spot by the cliff-edge, listens to the familiar call of the seabirds wheeling overhead. He has been alone for so long and resisted the pull of friends, family. Since Rey arrived they have settled into a new equilibrium, a new routine. It feels almost comfortable, if only he could ignore her obvious wish to learn about the past, and the clear and urgent need for him to finally rejoin the Resistance.

 

He has felt Leia calling for him across the vast distance separating them and has shut his mind off from her. He felt the destruction of the Hosnian system like a physical blow, like a vice around his heart that left him breathless, reeling. Just as Ben Kenobi had felt the destruction of Alderaan years before. _Ben,_ he thinks, _what should I do?_ His old master does not answer but Luke can imagine what he would say: _you need to make your own choices, Luke. Be mindful of the living Force._

 

All these years he has felt Ben Solo’s terrible pain, his rage as he desperately struggles towards the darkness. He also felt the moment Han’s Force signature disappeared and knew immediately that Ben – Kylo Ren as he calls himself now – had killed him. A second later Leia’s grief joined the sense of loss he feels from Han’s death, like an echo, from half way across the galaxy.

 

Luke sighs. Since he lost the battle with Snoke for Ben Solo’s soul he cannot connect with the Force as deeply as he would wish. After Han’s death it has been harder than ever to achieve the necessary peace as he tries to circumvent his and Leia’s shared grief. Now it seems he has another chance to start again with a new apprentice. But a little treacherous voice in the back of his mind reminds him, eventually she will learn what happened all those years ago, and you will lose her too.

 

Rey joins him and pulls him from his thoughts with a morning greeting. Normally she is easy to read, uncomplicated, a creature of pure light. This morning she seems troubled and he looks at her with concern.

 

“Did you not sleep well, my padawan?” he asks. There are dark circles under her eyes.

 

“No, I had… strange dreams.” She doesn’t volunteer any further information.

 

“Want to talk about it?”

 

“No – not right now,” she replies. She looks thoughtful. “Master, when will we return to the Resistance? I would love to see Finn again and I know General Organa is waiting for us to go back, having you there would help her so much.”

 

Luke sighs again. “I know, Rey. We will go back but for now neither you nor I are quite ready.”

 

She hesitates as if unsure whether to ask him something else. “Master Luke – when I arrived, you told me you would give me the answers I seek, about my family, about why I was left on Jakku. Can you tell me now?”

 

He closes his eyes, turns away. “Not yet. Not now – I can’t…”

 

He feels the sudden flash of suspicion, almost anger in her. “Be mindful of your thoughts, Rey. Patience is a virtue to the Jedi.”

 

He leaves, ostensibly to go and prepare them breakfast, mainly to get away. Sometimes he wishes he never left a trail for the Resistance to find him, longs for the solitary life of almost-peace, almost-calm, that he had led before Rey turned up. But in truth he couldn’t bring himself to sever all ties with Leia, Han, everything he has ever known.

 

In his mind he hears Yoda’s voice, _a Jedi should not be concerned with these things. You must let go of what you fear most to lose._ But I can’t, he thinks glumly. I am not ready to become one with the Force yet. Nor am I ready to face up to my responsibilities in this life.

 

He can still sense Rey standing outside and looking over the ocean. Her thoughts are in turmoil and he thinks he can feel a familiar tinge of darkness in her mind. _Where did that come from? Was I right? Is training her dangerous?_ He wishes for the wisdom of Kenobi, of Yoda, to guide him. They remain stubbornly silent and out of reach. One thing is sure – he can’t wait much longer before they return to D’Qar, or before he gives Rey the answers she so desperately seeks.


End file.
